One of the latest additions to our library became another Gerda Muller’s book and yet again it turned out to be a total hit! Even though we’ve loved all the books of this author that we own I was hesitant to buy this particular one. The thing is I don’t like the kids stories where animals are portrayed as mean-spirited, vengeful and alike. In all honesty those are human traits, yet as children grow up learning about animals in this way they form an opinion of animals being often mean and evil which is simply not true. There are countless stories of biologists who spent extensive time near a family of wolves or following a particular bear where you see that those animals actually rather tolerant of other species, often fiercely loyal to their family, brave and intelligent. So, if we aren’t teaching children real animal behavior, let’s not teach them negative falsehoods either.
…So going back to the book 🙂 … I noticed that one of the Amazon reviews mentioned that the ending of the book was changed and it was a really kind one. So, I ordered the book and true enough this was not your usual Goldilocks story — it has an ending with a very good lesson for a small child (..and even some adults).
One of the things I appreciate about Gerda Muller’s books is that the illustrations are not only beautiful, but really detailed. So you can go through this book many times over and still discover little interesting details. In this book almost each page has three of some creatures or objects and it is fun to spot them. We’ve been going through it every night for the last few weeks and really enjoy discussing all the little forest creatures, bears housewares and so on as we going through the story.
I think the pictures worth many words, so here are some of the pages from this really wonderful book.
And here is a quick link to this book’s page on Amazon – Goldilocks and the Three Bears.